ASA 128th Meeting - Austin, Texas - 1994 Nov 28 .. Dec 02

4aSPb10. Deficits in linguistic experience delay the development of mature
speech perception abilities and of phonemic awareness.

Susan Nittrouer

Boys Town Natl. Res. Hospital, 555 North 30th St., Omaha, NE 68131

One model of how mature patterns of speech perception develop suggests
that the weighting of various kinds of acoustic information changes as a result
of experience with a native language. It has further been suggested that this
developmental shift in perceptual weighting is related to the development of
mature sensitivity to the phonemic structure of one's native language (i.e.,
phonemic awareness). Thus it could be predicted that deficits in linguistic
experience would delay both the development of mature patterns of speech
perception and of phonemic awareness. This preliminary study tested this
prediction by administering labeling and phonemic-awareness tasks to two groups
of children: those of mid socioeconomic status (SES) and those of low SES.
Several studies have shown that parental language directed to low-SES children
differs from that directed to mid-SES children in kind and amount, such that
low-SES children may be thought of as enduring deficits in linguistic
experience. Results showed that low-SES children performed differently from
mid-SES children on both experimental tasks, displaying results similar to
those of younger, mid-SES children in other studies. These results suggest that
linguistic experience plays a role in the development both of mature perceptual
weighting schemes for speech signals and of phonemic awareness.